51 1979 British novels

Ambulance Ship is a 1979 science fiction short story collection by Northern Irish author James White, part of his Sector General series.

The Animals of Farthing Wood is the first book of the Animals of Farthing Wood book series, which was later adapted into a TV series of the same name. It was first published in 1979. An abridged version of 70 pages, by the same author, was published in 1993 to accompany the TV series.

A Bend in the River is a 1979 novel by Nobel laureate V. S. Naipaul.

The Bitch is the seventh novel by the British author Jackie Collins, first published in 1979.

The Blue Aura is a juvenile science fiction novel, the nineteenth in Hugh Walters' Chris Godfrey of U.N.E.X.A. series. It was published in the UK by Faber and Faber in 1979.

The Cater Street Hangman is a crime novel by Anne Perry. It is the first in a series which features the husband-and-wife team of Thomas and Charlotte Pitt.

Close to Home, is the second novel by English author Deborah Moggach, first published in 1979 by Collins. It is mentioned in the 6th edition of the Bloomsbury Good Reading Guide. Like her first novel You Must Be Sisters it is semi-autobiographical and relates to a time when she was living in Camden Town with two small children, a husband who was often away on business, and struggling to write a novel.

Company is a novella by Samuel Beckett, written in English and published by John Calder in 1979. It was translated into French by the author and published by Les Éditions de Minuit in 1980.

The Dark Triangle is a juvenile science fiction novel, the twentieth and last published in Hugh Walters' Chris Godfrey of U.N.E.X.A. series. It was published in the UK by Faber in 1979. One final book - The Glass Men - was written, but was never published.

Darkness Visible is a 1979 novel by British author William Golding. The book won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The title comes from Paradise Lost, from the line, "No light, but rather darkness visible".

Death's Master is a fantasy novel by British writer Tanith Lee, the second book in her series Tales from the Flat Earth. It won the British Fantasy Award for best novel of 1979.

The Devil's Alternative is a novel by British writer Frederick Forsyth first published in 1979. It was his fourth full-length novel and marked a new direction in his work, setting the story in the near-future rather than in the recent past. The work evolved from an unfilmed screenplay entitled No Alternative.

David Graham's Down to a Sunless Sea (1979) is a post-apocalyptic novel about a planeload of people during and after a short nuclear war, set in a near-future world where the USA is critically short of oil. The title of the book is taken from a line of the poem Kubla Khan by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The Eldorado Network is a 1979 espionage novel by Derek Robinson, published by Hamish Hamilton. Three sequels followed, Artillery of Lies in 1991, Red Rag Blues in 2006, and Operation Bamboozle in 2009. The novel, like all of Robinson's work, is based on fact, in this case a genuine double-agent known as "Garbo".

Electric Forest is a novel by Tanith Lee published in 1979.

Fathom Five is a 1979 novel by Robert Westall, and is the sequel to The Machine Gunners (1975). The book combines elements of spy story with the rites of a passage of teenage life. The characters are now older than in The Machine Gunners, and the themes are appropriate to their age. The transition from boy to man is one of the central aspects of the novel, and Chas is ultimately faced with a decision a mature adult would find daunting.

The Fight for Manod (ISBN 0701208090) is a 1979 novel by Raymond Williams.

The Flute Player is a fiction book by British novelist, poet, playwright and translator Donald Michael Thomas, known as D. M. Thomas. Thomas considers the book to be one of his six strongest novels. It was Thomas' first novel to be published, though it was the second he had written.

The Fortune of War is the sixth historical novel in the Aubrey-Maturin series by British author Patrick O'Brian, first published in 1979. It is set during the War of 1812.

The Fountains of Paradise is a 1979 science fiction novel by British writer Arthur C. Clarke. Set in the 22nd century, it describes the construction of a space elevator. This "orbital tower" is a giant structure rising from the ground and linking with a satellite in geostationary orbit at the height of approximately 36,000 kilometers. Such a structure would be used to raise payloads to orbit without the expense of using rockets. The novel won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards for Best Novel.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the first of six books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction "trilogy" by Douglas Adams. The novel is an adaptation of the first four parts of Adams's radio series of the same name. The novel was first published in London on 12 October 1979. It sold 250,000 copies in the first three months.

James Bond and Moonraker is a novelization by Christopher Wood of the James Bond film Moonraker. Its name was changed to avoid confusion with Fleming's novel. It was released in 1979.

Kane and Abel is a 1979 novel by British author Jeffrey Archer. Released in the United Kingdom in 1979 and in the United States in February 1980, the book was an international success. It reached No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. The sequel to Kane and Abel is The Prodigal Daughter, in which Florentyna Kane is the protagonist.

Lair is a 1979 science fiction horror novel by James Herbert, the first sequel to his debut The Rats and sixth book overall. He wrote two more sequels in the series after this: 1984's Domain and 1993's The City. The latter was a graphic novel.

The Last Enchantment is a 1979 fantasy novel by Mary Stewart. It is the third in a quintet of novels covering the Arthurian legend, preceded by The Hollow Hills and succeeded by The Wicked Day.

The Light Beyond the Forest: The Quest for the Holy Grail is the second book in Rosemary Sutcliff's Arthurian trilogy. While the previous book, The Sword and the Circle, is a collection of Arthurian tales including the creation of the Round Table, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Beaumains the Kitchen Knight, this book focuses on the search for the Holy Grail, cutting back and forth between the quests of Lancelot, Bors, Percival, and Galahad.

Make Death Love Me (1979) is a psychological crime novel by English author Ruth Rendell, regarded by some as one of her bleakest and most powerful stories. The novel was shortlisted for an Edgar and won Sweden's prestigious Martin Beck Award.

Man of Nazareth is a 1979 historical novel by Anthony Burgess based on his screenplay for Franco Zeffirelli's TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth. It is one of a trilogy of Burgess books with biblical themes, the others being The Kingdom of the Wicked and Moses.

}} The Mangan Inheritance, published in 1979, is a novel by Northern Irish-Canadian writer Brian Moore. Set in Ireland, it tells the story of a failed poet and cuckolded husband, James Mangan, who discovers a daguerrotype of a bohemian Romantic Irish poet with the same surname and seeks out connections to his literary ancestor.

My Uncle Oswald is a 1979 adult novel written by Roald Dahl.

Offshore is a 1979 novel by Penelope Fitzgerald. Her third novel, it won the Booker Prize in the same year. The book explores the emotional restlessness of houseboat dwellers who live neither fully on the water nor fully on the land. It was inspired by the most difficult years of Fitzgerald's own life, years during which she lived on an old Thames sailing barge moored at Battersea Reach.

The Other, Darker Ned is a 1979 novel written by author Anne Fine about a girl who hears her blind father complaining to his secretary that she only ever 'mopes' and he wishes that she would do something. She then goes to an Oxfam shop and takes a huge shock when she hears about poverty in India.

Overload (1979) is a novel by Arthur Hailey, concerning the electricity production industry in California and the activities of the employees and others involved with Golden State Power and Light, a fictional California public service company. The plot follows many of the issues of the day, including race relations, corporate politics, business ethics, terrorism and journalism.

Pig Earth is the first novel by John Berger in the Into Their Labours trilogy. Once in Europa, and Lilac and Flag followed in the trilogy.

A Planet Called Utopia is a science fiction novel by Scottish writer J. T. McIntosh, first published in August, 1979 in New York by Zebra Books. It is the last book published by the author.

The Saint and the Templar Treasure is the title of a 1979 mystery novel featuring the character of Simon Templar, alias "The Saint". The novel is written by Graham Weaver and Donne Avenell, but per the custom at this time, the author credit on the cover goes to Leslie Charteris, who created the Saint in 1928, and who served in an editorial capacity.

Service of All the Dead is a crime novel by Colin Dexter, the fourth novel in his Inspector Morse series.

Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta is a 1979 science fiction novel by Doris Lessing, and is the first book in her five-book Canopus in Argos series. It was first published in the United States in October 1979 by Alfred A. Knopf, and in the United Kingdom in November 1979 by Jonathan Cape. Shikasta is also the name of the fictional planet featured in the novel.

A Small Country is an English-language novel by Siân James, first published by HarperCollins in 1979. It is James's third novel, and has come to be regarded as a significant publication in Anglo-Welsh literature. It includes themes of Welsh identity and women's experience in the pre-First World War period.

Smiley's People is a spy novel by John le Carré, published in 1979. Featuring British master-spy George Smiley, it is the third and final novel of the "Karla Trilogy", following Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and The Honourable Schoolboy. George Smiley is called out of retirement to investigate the death of one of his old agents: a former Soviet general, the head of an Estonian émigré organisation based in London. Smiley learns the general had discovered information that will lead to a final confrontation with Smiley's nemesis, the Soviet spymaster Karla.

The Spellcoats (1979) is the third published novel in Diana Wynne Jones's series Dalemark Quartet, but chronologically the first. The story takes place several thousand years before Cart and Cwidder and Drowned Ammet. The time period is referred to as "prehistoric Dalemark" because by the time of the other books, only legends remain from this time. The people of prehistoric Dalemark do not have a written language, but some know how to write by weaving in a language of runes using yarn of many colours and textures.

Suicide Bridge is a novel by Iain Sinclair.

Territorial Rights is a novel by Scottish author Muriel Spark published in 1979.

Triple is a spy thriller novel written by British author Ken Follett. It was originally published in 1979. The background of the plot is Operation Plumbat, a 1968 operation carried out by Mossad that did not become publicly known about until 1977.

Tulku is a children's historical novel by Peter Dickinson, published by Gollancz in 1979. Set in China and Tibet at the time of the Boxer Rebellion, it features a young teenage boy orphaned by the violence, who flees with others to a Buddhist monastery. Dickinson and Tulku won two major awards for British children's books, the Whitbread Children's Book Award and the Carnegie Medal. The Carnegie Medal from the Library Association then recognised the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject.

The Unlimited Dream Company is a novel by British writer J. G. Ballard, first published in 1979. It was nominated for the John W. Campbell Memorial Award in 1980. It won the British Science Fiction Association Award in the same year.

Web is a science fiction novel by the English writer John Wyndham. The novel was published by the estate of John Wyndham in 1979, ten years after his death.

Whip Hand is a crime novel by Dick Francis, the second novel in the Sid Halley series. The novel received the Gold Dagger Award for Best Novel of 1979, as well as the Edgar Award for Best Novel of 1980. Whip Hand is one of only two novels to have received both awards.

Wild Justice is an adventure novel by Wilbur Smith. It was partially set in Seychelles where Smith had a home for a number of years.

A Woman of Substance is a novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, published in 1979. The novel is the first of a seven-book saga about the fortunes of a retail empire and the machinations of the business elite across three generations. The series, featuring Emma Harte and her family also includes Hold The Dream, To Be The Best, Emma's Secret, Unexpected Blessings, Just Rewards and Breaking the Rules. A Woman of Substance was adapted as an eponymous television miniseries as were the sequels Hold the Dream and To Be the Best.

You Must Be Kidding is a crime thriller novel by English author James Hadley Chase, published in 1979.